Day two in La Paz, and the last of our tour four of us were booked in for the death road bike tour, unfortunately one of the party was unwell so it it was just myself and two of the other girls. This was one of the things I had been most been looking forward to doing since before I’d left the UK. The road was once the main connection between la Paz and the jungle transporting lorries or fruit as well as a main bus route. The road in places is extremely narrow, no more then three metres and after years of horrific accidents with hundreds of casualties a year a new road was built to bypass the most dangerous sector of this road. This bit if the road is the now nearly solely used by adrenalin junkie tourist on the bike tours, I saw one car on the way down.

The tour starts in snow capped mountains at 4650 metres and finishes in rainforest at 1200 after 65km. We had really good safety gear including full motorcycle helmets. Different companies offering the same tour had varying levels of bikes and equipment, we went with our guides recommendation. We were also the only ones in our group, a lot of other tours have as many as thirty people! The bikes were “Specialized”, with full hydraulic breaks, a bit like being on a bouncy castle compared to my own town bike. The first twenty km is on a modern road, and as we headed off the drizzle turned to rain and within minutes we were drenched through despite all our gear. This first section was pretty easy and just involved overtaking some very slow lorries, the road itself was normal width and smooth; it was just a case of getting low as possible to enjoy the speed and stay off the breaks as it was the safest bit of road we’d be on! We reached a checkpoint where our bikes were reloaded into our minibus and driven twenty minutes uphill, off the new road to the “Death Road” section. Our first view of the road was pretty awesome and you got a great idea of the sheer drop! From then on in the track was gravel and at times pretty large rocks to navigate over. We stopped at several points on the way down to take some pretty cheesy staged photos at all the most prominent places. Myself and another girl really enjoyed the whole thing, but one of our party was petrified of the 600 metre drop off the side. To anyone thinking of doing it if you are scared of heights, or think you might be scared I wouldn’t suggest doing it as the result of being scared is going really slowing at which point the bike’s suspension doesn’t work for you and every bump hurts. I’m not saying you have to go fast, but the speed I was taking the larger rock areas, with the bikes we had you could just point forward and with the momentum and suspension the bike glided over them like it was nothing. But fair play to her, she stayed on the bike and completed the whole thing without chucking the bike back on the bus, and she was really pleased to have done, but never wanted to do it again. (On the way down I was loving it so much I was wondering if I could justify doing it again a few days later.) I met another English girl a few days later who hated it as well. She was so scared and seeing all the crosses of the road victims had really gotten to her, she’d been really slow and found the rockier sections really tough also.

Having started off freezing and soaked as we dropped lower the flora changed, you could smell rainforest and the temperature rose. On top of the rain we’d had to cycle through a few waterfalls along the track, we stopped for a ten minute break and got rid of the wind proof tops and bottoms. We’d been assured by the guide we’d gone through all the waterfalls at this point…..bar one massive one so got fully more drenched! The mid section was more flat and actually required a bit of pedal work, I stayed close to the guide and kept up with his pace. Lower down we passed through some small communities with large tarpaulins covered in coca leaves drying out. The very final bit was quite twisty and narrow, and in someways the most changeling cycling but without the shear drops, and was brilliant fun….also saw some massive bright blue butterflies!

For me it was the most fun I’ve had on my travels so far, the drop didn’t concern me, it was more a case of concentrating on the track itself. I was more likely to come off and hurt myself rather then going over the edge. As we had such a small group we didn’t have the worry of bumping into other riders which I think is how other tourists have had accidents. We also didn’t have any cocky lads in our group egging each other or racing…another way accidents happen! I saw one girl at the first checkpoint having her face bandaged up, and I was really glad to have the full motorcycle helmet on as her group only had normal road bike helmets. The guide told us about the fatalities that have occurred with cyclists over the last couple of years, on average 2/3 tourists have died every year. The last was a Japanese girl who fell while taking a photo; needless to say we only had access to our cameras at the stops were we could retrieve them from the minibus. The guide on the other hand took photos and a bit of video whilst cycling alongside us…as it was such a wet day most of the photos are pretty blurred but good to have some memories.